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Cauliflower Soup

A creamy cauliflower soup thickened with wheatmeal, seasoned with butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cauliflower Soup

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and break the cauliflower into pieces, keeping the flowers whole.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the cauliflower in 1½ pints of water with the butter, nutmeg, and seasoning until tender.

  2. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Smooth the wheatmeal with a little cold water, then add it to thicken the soup.

  4. Finally, add the lemon juice and serve with toast.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the body of the soup and gives it its main flavour.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the soup's texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounded, smooth mouthfeel and carries the nutmeg flavour.
Fine wheatmeal
Starch that thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the milk and butter.

The step that matters

Smoothing the wheatmeal before adding it. Flour added dry clumps into lumps that do not disperse. Mixing it smooth with cold liquid first lets the starch granules separate, so they hydrate evenly and thicken the soup without lumps when heated.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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